Tomorrow’s Lawyers

Dramatic Changes Ahead

Future legal practice will bear little relationship to the current practice of law or to the patterns of the recent past. This has implications for young lawyers, partners and anyone who has ambitions in the law profession. Older attorneys should heed the changes to come, especially law firm leaders who tend to the future of their operations and their partners’ pensions.

To understand what is on the way, attorneys must look to the future, not to the past. Ice hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky once recommended that all hockey players should “skate where the puck’s going, not where it’s been.”

Attorneys should do the same to keep up with the action in their profession. They must anticipate the imminent legal market. Within the next two decades, clients will buy legal services in far different forms than the way they purchase them today. This is due to three primary factors: “the ‘more-for-less’ challenge, liberalization and information technology.”

1. The More-for-Less Challenge

Lawyers’ clients fall into three categories: large organizations, small and medium-sized enterprises, and individuals. Each group faces this challenge.